Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on November 03, 2007 by CyberNet.

Weekend Website

There are many stores out there that offer a 30 day price guarantee which means if the price goes down after you’ve bought it, they’ll refund you the difference. The problem with this is that you have to know that the price dropped in the first place before you can get a refund. But who has time to check prices everyday for products they’ve bought in the last 30 days? Luckily, there are several sites out there that are all about helping you save money and letting you know when the price has dropped.  Today we’ll be covering services offered by PriceProtectr and PriceGrabber, two sites that cover multiple retail stores.  We’ll also be covering RefundPlease which focuses solely on Amazon, as well as Kayak which will notify you if the price of an airline ticket has gone down so that you know when to buy it.

PriceProtectr

PriceProtectr will check a stores’ website for price reductions for 30 days after you’ve purchased the product if they offer a 30 day price guarantee. It’s a fairly new service and they’re always adding new stores to their list.

Stores or services: In all,there are 58 supported sites. Some of them include (in alphabetical order):

Abercrombie & Fitch, Altrec.com, Amazon, Amazon Canada, Amazon UK, Amazon Germany, American Eagle Outfitters, American Musical Supply, Ann Taylor, The Apple Store, Backcountry.com, Banana Republic, Barnes and Noble, Bed Bath & Beyond, Best Buy, Best Buy Canada, Bike Nashbar, BJ’s Wholesale Club, bloomingdale’s, Circuit City, Comp USA, Cooking.com, Costco, Costco Canada, Crutchfield, Fry’s Electronics, Future Shop, Gap, J&R Computer World, Jenson USA, J. Crew, KB Toys, Kohls, Lacks Home Furnishings, Lamps Plus, Linens ‘N Things, London Drugs, Lowes, Music123, Musicians’ Friend, Nordstrom, Office Depot, Office Max, Old Navy, Petco, Radio Shack, Rooms To Go, Sears, The Sharper Image, 6th Avenue Electronics, Staples, Staples Canada, Swim Outlet, Target, Tiffany Lamps, White House – Black Market, Zappos.com, zZounds

Type of Notifications: Email (they promise not to spam you!)

Good/Bad: They offer a wide variety of stores that they can watch for dropping prices, unfortunately they don’t have an RSS feature so that you can be notified by a method other than email. It’s simple and easy to use, and can save you quite a bit of money.

RefundPlease.com

Much like PriceProtectr, RefundPlease.com is all about saving you money by notifying you when something you’ve purchased has gone down in price within 30 days of purchase. All you’ll need is the ISBN (of it’s a book) or the ASIN# for non-books, and they’ll be able to track the price of the item for you.

Stores or services: Amazon only

Type of Notifications: email

Good/Bad:The fact that they only offer this service for Amazon is disappointing, however the good news is that they plan to expand this service to include other online shopping retailers. Another great thing about this site is that they show you what the top five price changes were from the day prior.

PriceGrabber.com

PriceGrabber is better known as a comparison shopping tool and a place to get merchant reviews, or get notified of rebates or find coupons, but it too has a great feature that can be used for Price Drop Notifications. You’ll have to have an account, but once you do, you can use the ‘set price alert’ feature. To use it as a price drop notification service, just find the product you bought, select to filter by merchant, and then set the target price to what you paid for it.  Once it drops below the price you paid for it, you’ll get an alert.
 

Stores or services: Many, many stores in categories like:

Applicances, Auto parts, Barbies & Kids, Books & Magazines, Cameras, Cell Phones, Plans, & Accessories, Clothing, Computers, Consumer Electronics, Flowers & Gourmet, Furniture, Health & Beauty, Indoor Living, Jewelry & Watches, Movies (DVD & VHS), Music, Musical Instruments, Office Products, Outdoor Living, Software, Sporting Goods, Toys, Video Games

Type of Notifications:Email

Good/Bad: The good and bad happens to be their selection of merchants.  The list of supported merchants is HUGE, yet they’re lacking some of the major ones.

Kayak

Kayak is best known as a travel search engine, but they offer so much more than just a search engine. One of their features called Fare “Buzz” is especially helpful because you can set a Maximmum Price for an airline ticket, and once it drops below that price, you’ll be notified so that you can go buy the tickets while they’re being sold at a great price.

Stores or services: Airline Tickets

Type of Notifications:Email

Good/Bad:You select how often you want an email – either weekly, daily (or never) for the fare alert feature, which is nice. It would be great to see them add a “buzz” feature (or a notification service) for some of the other travel options like a hotel, a cruise, a rental car, etc.

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on November 20, 2006 by CyberNet.

Million Dollar Monday

They appear to get bigger and bigger every year, and range in size from “just” a yacht to “gigayachts.” While they are getting bigger, they’re also becoming the next “must have” toy for the insanely wealthy people to own.  Of course the list of insanely wealthy people also increases every year which means that if you’re in the yacht business… it’s probably going pretty good right now!

Plans have been drawn up for what is being considered the most extreme Superyacht. Pictured above, here’s why it’s extreme. We’ll start with passenger load. According to Yachting Magazine, there are luxury staterooms for up to 28 guests.  Along with the guests, there’s room for 11 personal staff and a crew of 48.  You’re kidding me? Two crew members per one guest? Moving on…  There’s a hot tub, swimming pool, sun decks, a helicopter pad, and tenders stored in “garages” which are built into the side and main hulls of the vessel. While the inside sounds impressive, the outside looks equally as impressive. It can “sprint” across the seas at 50 knots, and casually cruise at 40 knots. Not too shabby.  And the price tag? Your guess is as good as mine.

According to Forbes, there are 6,000+ yachts which are over 80 feet in size that roam the seas. That number has doubled from just 10 years ago.  I can only imagine what it will be like in another 10 years…. I’m picturing traffic jams on the high seas! Besides all of the upscale amenities, they also come with some of the latest technology: conference calling, video conferencing, and email by way of high-speed data links. In the same article on Forbes, it mentions that the last expensive yacht on their list is 24 million while the most expensive was over 103 million!  All of the upkeep and maintenance is estimated at another 10% of the cost per year. I can only imagine having that kind of money… 🙂

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on August 04, 2006 by CyberNet.

Free For All Friday

File Hippo is a website I just came across that makes finding and downloading free software simple and effortless! It is organized into categories like browsers and plugins, anti-spyware, audio and video, and the list goes on an on. Essentially, if you’re looking for any type of software, File Hippo will most certainly have a category for it filled with different options. Best of all, the software is free. After stumbling across this, I think it will become my ‘go to’ site for freeware. Here’s why: One of the first features I noticed was their RSS feeds. RSS feeds have become an essential part of my day to make sorting through information that’s important to me a little bit easier. File Hippo provides feeds for updates, categories, and individual programs. Convenience is something I like, and this is sure a convenience.

Another feature that was attractive is the fact that they keep old versions of programs! Sometimes when I get a new version of a program only to find that the bugs haven’t been worked out, I want to go back to a previous version. At times, this can be hard to come by. No more wasted time trying to track down old versions of a program that aren’t available anymore. Organization of a site and simply the looks of it are always important to me. While File Hippo has a simple user interface, it’s organized well and easy to find what you’re looking for. At the top of the website, they have a ‘latest updates’ as well as a ‘most popular downloads’ section. They claim to focus only on the best software so while quantity isn’t in large abundance, quality is. They also have a filtering feature that will show you only Freeware and/or Non-beta software. Finally, one of the greatest reasons I’ve been intrigued with File Hippo is because downloading is super simple, and there are no popups or spyware. Downloading software these days without popups or spyware is almost unheard of. This is a breath of fresh air when you’re able to download without getting attacked by popups. Here are my top picks in no particular order: Anti-Virus: AVG Free Edition 7.1.394 Audio and Video: Winamp 5.2.5 CD and DVD Tools: DVD Decrypter 3.5.4.0 Messaging and Chat: Google Talk Imaging: Picasa 2.5 Firewalls and Security: Sygate Personal Firewall File Hippo is a great resource in helping you to find quality freeware that you’re interested in and it’s simple and easy to use. Check it out!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on August 07, 2006 by CyberNet.

Million Dollar Monday

For a do it yourself kit, take a look at this video clip from CNET. There’s a 3 minute install option or a fully built in option available. The person giving the demo in the CNET clip mentions the Blue Tooth integration that would give your PC the capability to mute your music when you receive a phone call. Another cool function would be the capability for your PC to tell you why your check engine light is on. Plus, the option for people to design plug-ins for the system opens up a whole new door of possibilities. Pricing for the kit mentioned on CNET is around $2,000. As built in navigation systems become more prominent in vehicles, I anticipate we will see more advanced car PC systems. Instead of just using the built in navigation system to control music, we could be using our personal built in PC system to access our entire music collection, and connect to the internet. Before we know it, our cars will be doing it all!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com

This article was written on April 28, 2008 by CyberNet.

Microsoft/Mac Monday

Last week in our MyFive article titled “Computers We’ve Owned,” we left out a “5th Generation” of computers that we’ve owned in the past because we hadn’t yet purchased them. In the article, we mentioned that we’ve been looking at different models and manufacturers to see what would be best. We finally made our decision after lots of research, and the purchases were made. So what kind of computers did we end up with?

After much contemplation and lots of going back-and-forth, we decided on MacBook Pros. Now, before the Apple fanboys start giving us high-fives and the Apple haters start saying “that’s it, I’m done reading CyberNet,” we wanted to point out that even after using the Mac computers for a week, we are still firm believers that both Mac OS X and Windows (whether it be Vista or XP) have strengths and weaknesses. That last sentence alone helps explain why we ended up with MacBook Pros: because with them, we get the best of both worlds! If we said one operating system was better than the other, we’d be ignorant. We can run OS X and have the benefits of using it, but we can also run Vista or XP using Parallels and take advantage of the benefits that they offer.

Today we thought we’d take the time to just let you know about our first impressions: what we like and what we don’t like, and what it’s like going from being a Windows user to an OS X user. After using Windows for so long, there have been lots of things that are taking time to get used to, so we’ll talk about those things as well. Just note that what we’re writing about is our “out-of-box” experience, what the computer was like before installing any applications.

First Impressions

Our first impressions started shortly after purchasing the computers. Without going into too much of the boring details, there was a problem with our order. It was our mistake, but a call to Apple had our problem taken care of within minutes. Later that day we received an email with a survey that Apple wanted us to complete for calling their Customer Service line, so we completed the survey. The next day, we received a call from an Apple Manager checking up to see how our experience was. He even gave us his direct phone number so if we had any questions or concerns in the future, we could call him. We were impressed at the level of customer care that they offered.

Once the computers actually came (we ordered online through the Apple Store online), our first impression of the appearance was “wow, these are pretty slick computers.” Apple did a great job with the design. It’s slim (compared to our previous computers) and really feels durable. Of course we knew there was only going to be one mouse button, but it was still weird to see one long button instead of two shorter buttons.

Set-up

Setting up the computers was easier than I ever expected it to be. Overall it’s not that much different from Windows — you go through a couple of screens and it’s ready to be used. One nice thing was that there weren’t a bunch of 3rd party applications that had to be uninstalled like what would happen if you purchase a computer with an OEM version of Vista on it. We always started with a fresh install of Windows in the past, so the 3rd party apps were never a problem for us anyways.

Keyboard

Another first impression was that we’re not a huge fan of Apple keyboards. Why you ask? Well, the positioning of the keys is different and the Alt and Command keys are flipped. Another “problem” is that instead of using the Ctrl key for shortcuts like copying and pasting, you use the command key which definitely takes getting used to.

We’ve always plugged-in a keyboard to use with our laptops at home because we type for hours on end everyday and need something ergonomic. In general we just don’t like Apple keyboards and so we decided to stick with our Microsoft Comfort Curve Keyboards.

On the keyboard that we’re used to using, there are keys for print screen, page up, page down, and more. On an Apple keyboard, those keys don’t exist. Things like that can make transitioning between a keyboard on a PC and a keyboard on a Mac a little more difficult.

Surfing the Web

We’ve always been Firefox and Opera users, but we decided that since the computers came with Safari, we’d give it a try. All I can say is that we only lasted a few hours using Safari. It’s not that it’s a bad browser, it’s just that we’re used to Firefox and we’ll be using both Windows and OS X regularly. Because we don’t like Safari for Windows, Firefox will be better to use from a consistency and bookmarks standpoint.

For casual browsing, Safari works great. We did notice though that once we started our “heavy” browsing and pulling up lots of sites, the short-comings of Safari started to show.

Switching Operating Systems is like…

Switching Operating Systems to us is just like moving to a new city. If you’ve moved, you know that there’s some fun and excitement to exploring new places but there’s some discomfort because it is unfamiliar and it might take you longer to get to where you need to go or you might get lost on occasion. We’re excited and having fun exploring Mac OS X, but we can say we’ve gotten “lost” every now and then trying to figure out how to do something.

When you live in a city for 10 years, you know where to find the best deals and you know all of the back roads to get from point A to point B. Similarly, when you’ve used Windows for 10 years, you know all of the best software that’s available and you know all of the shortcuts to get tasks done as quickly as possible. We’re starting fresh in a “new city” and things are good, but a little confusing too.

Features we like

• Configuring multiple monitors is much, much easier:
  We both have a dual monitor set-up and so we were curious what the configuration options would be. They are so nice! You’re shown two configuration screens, one for each monitor, and then you’re able to drag and drop each monitor in the position that you want it. Along the same lines, Ryan uses his 24″ monitor in a vertical orientation. With Windows he had to either install the graphics card software or download a 3rd party application to successfully rotate the 2nd display. With our Mac computers, there were absolutely no issues and no software had to be installed.

  Another nice thing is that you can drag and drop the Dock/Menu Bar to the screen where you’d like it displayed. At one point Ryan wrote about a “trick” that could be used on Windows computers for choosing a primary monitor and all kinds of people said that it was so helpful. If Microsoft made managing monitors as easy as Apple, tricks like that wouldn’t be necessary.

• Spaces:
  Ahhh.. Spaces. We’re already in love with it. You can set-up multiple virtual desktops and drag windows from one virtual desktop to another. I have one desktop set-up with all of the applications I use for blogging, and another one set-up for the applications that I use for personal things like my address book, or photo editing
• Installing Apps is easier:
  Typically you just have to drag an icon for the new app you’re installing into the applications folder. Uninstalling is just as easy, you just drag the folder you no longer want from the Applications folder to the trash
• Spotlight Search:
  We’d say the Spotlight Search is better organized and slightly more powerful (you can get dictionary definitions and calculations right there on-the-spot) than Vista’s built-in searching feature

Getting Used to…

There’s a whole list of things that are taking time for us to get used to so we’ll just bullet them out.

• Command key – it’s driving us crazy using it instead of Ctrl for most shortcuts
• Resizing of most Windows can only be done on the bottom right corner, we’re used to resizing from anywhere on the window
• Start key/menu- I miss it, I really do! I used Vista’s built-in searching capabilities all the time and therefore got used to pressing the start key. It’s no longer there…
• Keyboard shortcuts – they are all different!
• Quitting an application
  If you click the X in the upper left-hand corner and think the application has closed, you’re wrong. You actually have to go up to the menu bar and click the menu for the program you’re running and then click “Quit.” Alternatively, you can press Command+Q
• Maximizing a screen works differently – instead of filling up the whole screen, it only enlarges the window as large as it needs to be to fit the content of the Window
• Forcing a quit is no longer Ctrl+alt+delete – it’s Cmd-Alt-Escape — just a bit different
• Menu-bar location can be inconvenient when you’re using multiple monitors (it would be nice to place the menu-bar on both monitors for someone who has a dual monitor set-up)
• Customization options aren’t as abundant – with Windows there are seemingly endless amounts of customization options by diving into the registry and all kinds of hidden tweaks. With Mac, not so much… While there may be tips and tricks for Macs as well, it seems as though they are harder to come by…

Overall

We’re not giving-up on Windows entirely – we still have a Desktop computer running Vista Ultimate. It serves as our Media Center machine and will continue to back-up all of our important files and documents from the computers on our home network. We’ll also be running Vista using Parallels for certain things on our MacBook computers.
Overall, the out of box experience with our MacBook Pro computers is pretty impressive, but with the price you pay, you’d expect that. We’re happy to now be able to bring unbiassed news and tips from both sides of the spectrum This leads me to the next bit of information we wanted to share. Starting this week, our Microsoft Monday will now be Microsoft/Mac Monday and we’ll end up talking about both Windows and OS X.
In the past we’ve been called “Microsoft Fanboys” so this should go to show that we are open minded about how we view different operating systems. We’re sorry to anyone who is disappointed that we are now using Apple Hardware but we’re sure if you stick around, you’ll notice that we’ll still be covering plenty of Windows news and tips as we always have. Nothing has changed, other than the fact you might see a Mac article sprinkled into our daily writing every now and then.

What we need from you…

This is all so new to us, so if you’re using a Mac computer, let us know of any tips you might have, or must-have apps!

Copyright © 2013 CyberNetNews.com